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Rewarding employee health

By Samsung Knox

Companies have long acknowledged the considerable role of improved employee health and wellbeing on workplace productivity, job satisfaction and myriad other benefits. From green plants and spacious offices to occupational health departments, corporate-sponsored health insurance and gym memberships, these traditional efforts are now being joined by everyday technologies that are part of our modern lives.

Smartphone apps and online tools offer health services for everything from counting calories to countering depression. And if having a host of wellness coaches in the palm of our hands was not enough, we also increasingly have them attached to our bodies. The wearable FitTech market will be worth an estimated US$25bn globally by 2019, and while UK sales slowed last year they still rose by 25% year on year, with 5m units sold across the country in 2016.

Businesses are increasingly encouraging employee engagement in health apps and fitness wearables, with US IT advisory company Gartner predicting that “most large companies”—those with more than 500 employees—in western Europe are now offering fitness trackers as part of corporate wellbeing programmes. It also predicts that by the end of this year, 70% of multinationals around the world will sponsor the use of fitness-tracking devices.

Use of health apps and wearables has tripled recently among UK health technology users:

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which comes into effect in May 2018, does not distinguish between “personal” and “professional” data on devices used for work activity, granting employees greater control over such sensitive information and regulating the terms under which an employer can access such data. Some technology firms, such as Samsung, are isolating access to non-work apps on smartphone devices, granting not just peace of mind against employer snooping, but also protecting sensitive employer data in the event of device loss or theft.

Health-related productivity loss is costing the UK economy an estimated £73bn per year.

The Samsung Knox security platform—which is built into each Samsung mobile device, anchored in the chip and layered through every aspect of the device—keeps apps that the user considers personal hidden and inaccessible to employers in a Secure Folder, while still allowing system administrators to manage corporate email or other business applications on the device using Knox Workspace. Both functions can be used individually or simultaneously, streamlining operational use for both parties.

“Every company is facing a security-versus-privacy issue”, says Maxime Guirauton, B2B marketing director, Europe, at Samsung, “and is questioning how to keep company data protected while ensuring employees’ privacy and security of their personal data. Knox Workspace and Secure Folder are the answer to this conundrum. They are distinctly encrypted containers, isolated from the rest of the device.”

Nick Read, commercial director of Vitality, a British insurance company that incentivises shared fitness and wellbeing data to offer lower premiums and partner deals, says that “incentivising FitTech purchases does not inherently conflict with GDPR. It remains the choice of each individual if they want to sign up to any wearable scheme or challenge at their workplace and what data they want to share.”

“Employers should ensure that they not only get employee consent, but make employees feel secure about data use and storage.”

Nick Read, commercial director, Vitality

Thanks to Knox’s ability to have a personal and a corporate container on Samsung mobile devices, both the employee and employer are protected. While the employee would not be able to opt-out from allowing company access to the corporate container even if it is on their own phone, Mr Guirauton says that “with Secure Folder, we wanted to guarantee that companies cannot have access to employees’ personal data: photos, emails, social media and the like. This solution is unique as it has been developed from the chip up.”

As mobile devices have become extensions of our own lives—both work and personal—the need for data security and privacy to be assured has become obvious, and crucial. Digital technologies have made tailored health solutions affordable and easily accessible—but the open economy can only truly flourish when each individual consciously chooses what data to share, with whom, how, when, why and where.